Especially should the pupil look at the thought in these prose extracts and
at the manner in which it is expressed. This will lead him to take a step
or two over into the field of literature. If the attempt is made, one
condition seems imperative--the pupil should thoroughly understand what the
author says. We know no better way to secure this than to exact of him a
careful reproduction in his own words of the author's thought. This will
reveal to him the differences between his work and the original; and bring
into relief the peculiarity of each author's style--the stateliness of De
Quincey's, for instance, the vividness of Webster's, the oratorical
character of Macaulay's, the ruggedness of Carlyle's, the poetical beauty
of Emerson's, the humor of Irving's, and the brilliancy of Holmes's--the
last lines from whom are purposely stilted, as we learn from the context.
The pupil may see how ellipses and transpositions and imagery abound in
poetry, and how, in the use of these particulars, poets differ from each
other. He may note that poems are not pitched in the same key--that the
extracts from Wordsworth and Goldsmith and Cowper, for example, deal with
common facts and in a homely way, that the one from Lowell is in a higher
key, while that from Shelley is all imagination, and is crowded with
audacious imagery, all exquisite except in the first line, where the moon,
converted by metaphor into a maiden, has that said of her that is
inconsistent with her in her new character.
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